It’s getting noticeable. Friends and family are starting to point it out. They make casual remarks such as “Wow, there’s more gray now than the last time I saw you” or, “You had such pretty red hair”.

Had? I went to the bathroom mirror and pointedly examined my head of hair from all angles. They were right…the offending filaments were taking over. And it wasn’t a dull gray neither. It was more like a shimmery metallic silver that catches the light as if to announce boldly “Hello aging person – I AM HERE!” like a cabaret performer vying to be the center of attention. How did I not notice?

The advancing silver outsmarted me, plain and simple. It didn’t come in all at once so I would wake up one morning, panic, and go get L'Oreal products to conceal it. It marched in stealth-like, took up positions in quadrants and radioed back to headquarters that it had firmly established a base. And now that I’ve acknowledged its occupation of my head, it’s the only color I can see.

Oh how I will miss my red hair. In my youth, I pretended to be Anne of Green Gables, Pippi Longstocking or the little red-haired girl that Charlie Brown crushed on. When my daughter was little, she was convinced that I was the mermaid Ariel as we pretended to live under the sea. I hate to imagine what character I will play with my future grandchildren…Gray Wolf? Call of the Wild? A portrayal of Richard Gere or Jay Leno, perhaps?

And then I noticed the pattern. If I just cut off all of the gray on the sides of my head, I would end up with a mullet! Hmmm, let’s think about this…I could return to my glory days for the price of looking like Billy Ray Cyrus in the 80s. That’s a tough decision.

Billy's Mullet

But for the moment, I have decided not to act irrationally. In fact, I have decided not to decide and will instead officially enter the denial period of my aging process. I will overcompensate and buy new clothes, maybe a new car. I will rock climb and start texting in code to my friends. I’ll say things like “true dat” and “sup”. Maybe I’ll watch The Hills or get a mad crush on singer Chris Brown.

That way, I won’t have time to notice the hostile takeover of life upon my body.